The inevitable intersectional pushback for “Black Panther”

When the movie “Black Panther” came out, with an African-American director and an all-black cast, and then it cleaned up at the box office and attracted tons of black children, I was pleased. Yes, I know there have been black superhero movies before, but this one was reputed to be especially good, and what’s wrong with having superhero role models for kids?

Well, I didn’t count on the depredations of intersectionality. Yes, a black director, an all-black cast, and a story of black empowerment, but the Pecksniffs are always snuffling around for something wrong, or for some group that was left out. And now they’ve found it—or rather, easily offended reviewer Jolie Doggett has (click on the screenshot to see her kvetching). Doggett is in pain!

The problem: the movie is set in the fictional African country of Wakanda (“fictional” is the operative word), and Wakanda excludes outsiders. Outsiders means “Americans”, including African-Americans, and that means “Jolie Doggett.” Ergo she can’t connect with the movie because, if she were in the area of the fictional Wakanda, they’d “kick her black ass out.” She would be a—gasp—colonizer! Here’s part of her beef (in toto it’s a very large cow):

But when I woke up, my excitement was extinguished by a sense of dread and disappointment. I know it’s not a real place, but if Wakanda were real, would its people actually let my black ass in? According to every Wakandan in this movie, not likely.

The film constantly drove home the point that Wakanda is for Wakandans only. Anyone trying to get in was a colonizer, seeking only to rob Wakanda of its riches. Or they were an outsider, bringing their ownproblems into the utopia. And this included people who shared their same skin tone.

That narrative of exclusion was painfully familiar to this black girl. To be a black American is to know that you’re descended from people who were stripped of their culture. To know that you’re forever separated from your origins. People will ask you where you’re from ― no, where are you really from? ― and you aren’t able to answer.

I went into “Black Panther” seeking refuge from that awkwardness and a piece of shared black American and African culture to hold on to. Instead, I found myself having to face the sometimes harsh reality that there is a division within our diaspora that’s not going to easily heal.

Division? It’s a movie! It’s fiction! The “division within the diaspora” exists only in Doggett’s mind, because she has to find something to kvetch about.

This I don’t get. The story of Wakanda is set in a fantasy world, and black people of all stripes have come together liking the film. The exclusionary bit was a plotline, not some nefarious plot to exclude Julie Doggett from Wakanda. That she feels excluded says a lot more about her than about the movie. For one thing, it says that she can’t suspend disbelief: even a comic-book fantasy must in every respect comport with her comfort. And if she’s uncomfortable with the isolationism of a fictional kingdom, that’s her issue, not the movie’s.

She simply puts too much political and emotional weight on the film, and, in the end, she wants Wakanda to open up its borders—but surely only to black people:

That this Marvel movie could evoke these emotions in viewers like me and start an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about black American and African relations actually makes “Black Panther” an amazing and important cinematic journey. And Wakanda becomes less of a fictional place I can never go to, and more like a real Afrofuture we all should strive toward, where everyone in the diaspora has a place to call home.

As one of my friends said after reading this article, “Doggett is confused by the concepts of African, People Of Color, and Superhero Comics; and does not seem to fully appreciate that the three may overlap, especially in fiction, but they are not the same.”

I for one am certain that I don’t know how to pronounce “Xhosa!” correctly – I just can’t get the “!” at all, let alone get it right. And I’ve tried, with the assistance of several native-born speakers.
It would be amusing to see them (USian filum staars) try.

And I’m unitedstatesian, wrote in my native language, which is entirely different from English. Entirely.

I’m slowly cooking my way through a large — ~ 2,700 recipes — Mexican cookbook. Appropriation? Not at all. I’m unitedstatesian, by definition every recipe I prepare is unitedstatesian. Prepared in the United States by a unitedstatesian, eaten in the United States by unitedstatesians. What are they if not unitedstatesian?

Apparently she missed the end of the movie, and the first after-credits scene. The King announced to the U.N. that Wakanda was going to share it’s resources with the world, and help out other countries. This included helping out disadvantaged kids in the U.S.

Yes agreed. That was a IMO the best plot in the movie; the idea that essentially the bad guy was right in pointing out that the good guy’s exclusionary policy wasn’t as good as they claimed, but had horrible consequences for a lot of non-Wakandans. And the good guy took that lesson to heart, and changed the policy.

Frankly IMO the main plot was quite thin for a 2+ hr movie. I liked the movie, but The side commentary on social policy (mostly by the bad guys) was a very welcome add.

Dogget’s commentary, besides simply being dumb in its content, completely misses the point of the movie. To the time in which the movie tales place (present day in Marvel land), the Wakandans’ isolation has been self-imposed for their own protection. By the end of the movie, they’ve come to the realization that they need to interact, and work, with “outsiders.”

I saw Black Panther last weekend. Not my kinda movie, but quite a spectacle — an orgy of CGI and F/X. I just kinda let it wash over me; couldn’t tell you the plotline except in vague, general outline.

Whole lotta very toothsome sisters & brothers, too. Plus Forrest Whitaker, in full Ghost Dog mode, and Angela Bassett, in full regal mode. (That woman can do regal even after taking a beatdown from Ike Turner.) Love me some Forrest and Angela.

Not sure I’ll ever go to the trouble of seeing it again. But all told, I enjoyed it. Jolie Doggett, on the other hand, seems to have watched it under the penumbra cast by her own narcissism.

While I certainly don’t find Black Panther offensive, I believe the point of the HuffPost article was misunderstood. It wasn’t really about Black Panther at all, but rather, about the search by some African Americans for a cultural identity in Africa.

The author is disappointed that Black Panther depicts an African nation that feels no kinship with African Americans. She laments this but bites that this is a situation in the real world. She claims that she feels like an outsider in the United States and that she has no home land in Africa either. She expresses hope for such a home land.

Such a hope is impractical in my view— and Americans certainly tried with Liberia. But the author expresses a valid point. It just has nothing to do with Black Panther.

Wasn’t there a movie about South Africa a few years back (I only ever saw the trailer) where an Afrikaner (i.e. white from South Africa descended from Dutch) and someone played by an African American actor debate “African”?

I think it may have been pointed out here before that the movie has of course also been criticized for not representing LGBTQ.
As if the LGBTQ people in a movie have to be acting all, you know, LGBT or Q all the time because sex is all they think about.

From what I understand, the protagonist is the fascist dictator of a militant isolationist ethno-state whose immigration policy makes Donald Trump look like an open borders advocate. And the primary villain is an American, because of course he is.

“a real Afrofuture we all should strive toward, where everyone in the diaspora has a place to call home”

Reverse the race and that’s what Richard Spencer’s goons are calling for. And, btw, we tried this before. It’s called Liberia, and it kinda sucks.

How about we instead work toward getting over our racial hangups, because the differences between races isn’t all that important.

I feel sorry for Jolie Doggett. She’s lived in such a cloistered world she’s never had to encounter actual Africans who look down on black people for not being African enough. Her only experience with anything remotely close to this is in a superhero movie.

She makes the same mistake racists make: treating the *continent* of Africa as a unified *country*

This particular plot feature to Black Panther was really good. This is the kind of dialogue people need to have.

It is precisely because Black Panther puts disturbing elements that reflect colonialism and fratricide and injustice and racism that we should be promoting it. Anyone scared of this movie is scared to make the claim that prejudice is real and something we always need to work on.

Probably it won’t take her long to get the answer she seeks when she finds out that Black Panther was created by two white guys, Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber) and Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg). Of course she felt excluded! It’s a plot to demoralize coloured people!

Then she will push even further since both are/were Jewish artists… Conspiracy!

A good movie makes people feel good for having watched it, but not people like her. She can’t enjoy anything because she has to find reasons to dismiss everything as somehow doing damage to her mind and existence. She feels excluded because her beliefs force her look for reasons to feel that way in every corner and crack. People like her are addicted to searching for offense, exclusion, and anything else to sate this deep need to feel like the world is against them.

I can’t imagine how joyless such a life must be. The one thing in the world that’s oppressing her most — robbing her of feelings like joy, safety, and satisfaction — is her own mindset.

The end point of such logic is that joy, safety and satisfaction are merely a matter of positive thinking, not rooted in material reality. While I agree that Doggett has some confused expectations of the film industry, I highly doubt that the one thing that oppresses her most is her own mind. By extrapolation, all oppression is self-imposed. I cannot believe that you actually think that.

The modern world of criticism is not what a text says, but what it doesn’t say but other to in the eye of each beholder. Yet another reminder how pointless it is to try to engage in any media these days because inevitably what matters is what it’s not because it could have been.

I think Jolie Doggett may have misunderstood the strong anti-isolationist (even anti-Trump) message of Black Panther. Clearly the gist of the film was to criticize the selfish Wakandan isolationism, not celebrate it. The main character needed to learn this, and this was the moral journey he and the Wakandan people had to travel in the story. And this is why Black Panther had a better story than most superhero films.

But Doggett does raise a valid point and I can only assume many African-Americans feel the same way. I’ve noticed a lot of Americans still want to identify themselves by their ancestral background, often European, while feeling a strong connection to the American history, too. A European-American ancestry gives them two cultural backgrounds to choose from and mix them as they like. But for African-Americans it must be much more difficult, as an African-American ancestry might leave you with almost none. For one thing, it must be too bitter to whole-heartedly celebrate any American holiday dating from the time the American society considered your ancestors sub-human. And for many, their actual African ancestry must be even impossible to trace, since it is so diverse. The American society seems to lump all “blacks” together, which is based on the political history of racial oppression. I’m “white”, but being Finnish, I don’t see myself sharing any particular “white” ethnicity with the Poles, the Swiss or the Italians, even though Europe is a tiny place compared to Africa, which is a huge continent with hugely diverse cultures. In African terms, it would be quite silly to consider a Kenyan, a Nigerian and anyone from the diverse Bantu nations the same ethnic group. And most African-Americans are likely to be a wide genetic mix with ancestors from all over Africa (although mostly around the Gulf of Guinea). So, it’s very understandable if Doggett doesn’t feel comfortably connected to the American history, but neither can she find a clear ancestral home in Africa, either. The pan-African ideal is a political one, not cultural reality.

I’m not a fan of superheroes, but I loved the idea of Wakanda, an African super-power of science and technology. Although it is a comic-book fairy tale, I can only hope it might encourage some African-American kids to pursue a career in science.

The lede begins with “I didn’t like ‘Black Panther’ at first.” and ends with “I came to realize that my discomfort was actually the whole point of the movie.” The article ends with #WakandaForever and Wakanda for everyone.
As an African American, Jolie Doggett is unsettled that the only African American in Black Panther is a violent gangsta named Killmonger who is treated like an alien by the Wakandans. As an American, she wants to refer to her roots, like when someone says, “I’m Irish!” But being a descendant of slaves from parts unknown, a point that is touched upon in perhaps the most painful line of the film when Killmonger asks to be buried at sea. So the relation between Killmonger and Wakanda stands proxy for a host troubling truths. “That this Marvel move could evoke these emotions in viewers like [her] and start an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about black American and African relations actually makes “Black Panther” an amazing and import cinematic journey.”
How is this anything other than a stunning accolade for the film?

It’s a shame, because Black Panther was one of the more interesting characters in my comic reading of my childhood years. I was quite interested to see how they managed the entire “black repression/ rebellion” theme without frightening the USian customers.
But the local flea pit is under boycott for not paying a living wage to it’s staff. I’m sure it’ll be on TV some time. Fast forward through the adverts.

After reading this, I’ve come to the realization that black Americans focus too much on race and ancestral origin, so much so that they’ve essentially segregated themselves.

It’s always good to know where you came from and to learn about the history of your people, but it shouldn’t define who you are.

Time for you to get up in the morning, and be satisfied with being a modern US american, not black, not white, not african, not irish, not whaterver. All you are, is American. Own it, be it and stop hating yourselves.